In the novel, Private Bird Clark of the 13th Mississippi Regiment declares that their brigade is “one of the fightin’est…in the army, and therefore one of the smallest.”

Indeed, casualties had, within a few more months, trimmed Humphreys’ (formerly Barksdale’s) Mississippi Brigade to just about 800 men—or less than the size of the original 13th Regiment alone.

And the 13th, well, from a high of about 1,200 men at the start of the war, they would be, by March 8, 1864, merely “an aggregate present of 208” about the total of two companies in the summer of 1861.